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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27140110">Twenty-Three Brown Birds</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WyrmDisco/pseuds/WyrmDisco'>WyrmDisco</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Friends at the Table (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:01:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,639</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27140110</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/WyrmDisco/pseuds/WyrmDisco</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They meant to send the Archivist. With his knowledge, with his powers, maybe... Maybe he wouldn't do the right thing, but he would do his thing. Maybe that would be enough to create something new, to stop the Heat and the Dark. When the twenty-second brown bird landed, when the mirror broke, they meant to send the Archivist.</p><p>But the Druid tumbled through, instead.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Emmanuel Aracia La Salle/Lem King, Fero Feritas/Lem King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. What Life Looks Like</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And inside the room, the interrogator opens the door but looks out into the room where Lem King has just sat up from the telescope. Uklan Tell is still kneeling, surrounded by dandelion fluff. The dust riddles the fat, uneven towers of books around him. Fero sees the door open and Ephrim is there, Lem is there. A bunch of other people he doesn’t care about very much.</p><p>He pretends to be dead a little while longer.</p><p>All of the dandelion seeds are in the air, circulating, catching the light in a way that makes them look like prisms.</p><p>Zhan Kurr says, “The pattern worked! King, empty your bag. Hurry!”</p><p>“My bag?”</p><p>“Your bag!”</p><p>“Uhh,” his hands fiddle with the latches, catching as if he has never opened them before, “uh, okay. What in it? My- my actual bag?”</p><p>“Yeah!” Zhan moves for the bag.</p><p>“What am I- all of it?” </p><p>Zhan nods enthusiastically, and Lem empties the contents onto an already-cluttered desk. Adventuring gear, five weeks of rations, an orcish communications box, a book on gnoll etymology, a map of the plans of Nacre, a map of the old empire of Nacre, a book of tristeros poetry- which Zhan Kurr grabs.</p><p>He shakes it, shocked, and holds it daintily with minimal contact, “What? Why is it wet? Oh shit, keep going.” And he runs to the kitchen.</p><p>Two hundred and sixty three gold, an engraved mask from the tower.</p><p>“Put it on!” Zhan shouts, “Quickly!”</p><p>“W-what really?”</p><p>“Yes!”</p><p>“Last time,” Lem looks at his hands, still pruned, “Last time it went badly.”</p><p>“Don’t worry!”</p><p>And Lem King should have worried. For a brief moment, he sees Samot looking over Marielda. Lem is behind him, and Samot turns over his shoulder, and he’s looking at a map of Hieron. It reflects the weird new tower to the west, and he exhales, “Where’s Hadrian?”</p><p>Lem starts, “Oh! God-” and takes a step forward.</p><p>Samot turns to look at him fully. “You’re-”</p><p>On the map behind him, Samot has shifted some little figurines from the East to the West. There’s a horse and a carriage that he’s shifted from one to the other, and there are two big pins that he’s pinned to the Eastern side of the map. Lem isn’t sure what any of this means.</p><p>Samot swallows. Blinks. “You know Fantasmo, right?” He takes a step forward. “And Hadrian?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Why do you wear my mask?”</p><p>“Uh…”</p><p>“You have to deliver a message to them, this is- I need to see them both.”</p><p>“Me?”</p><p>“Ye-” Samot looks down. “Of course.”</p><p>Lem reaches out, then lets his hand fall. “W-what do you want me to tell them?”</p><p>Samot falls weightless into the chair behind him. He reaches out for a goblet of wine, knocks it over, and lets it spill to the floor. “This isn’t real.”</p><p>And Lem is zipped back into the room, Zhan Kurr looking at him expectantly. </p><p>“Ohhh no,” Lem says, turning the mask over in his shaking hands, “That was a mistake!”</p><p>“It’s fine!” Zhan does not stop saying, “It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine!”</p><p>“That was such a fucking mistake!”</p><p>“It’s fine, you’re back it’s fine!”</p><p>“I saw Samot!”</p><p>“I know!”</p><p>Ephrim looks to the interrogator, who is shouting at Lem for the book of poetry. Zhan Kurr looks at the interrogator, opens the book that Ventaro Doce gave to Lem King, and tears out a page.</p><p>“I think this one is dry enough!” And he puts it down on the table, and begins to flint on steel, trying to set it on fire.</p><p>Lem jumps, “W- you’re burning it!”</p><p>“Just the one page, it only needs one verse! One divine verse!”</p><p>Lem turns, helpless, to the interrogator, “Who are you?”</p><p>He coughs, “Gan Tell. My name is Gan Tell. Who- un- sorry, apologize, this is-” and he reaches out to shake Lem’s hand.</p><p>Fero, dead on the floor this whole time, cannot stand this anymore.</p><p>“THIS FUCKING GUY HAD ME LOCKED UP!”</p><p>Attention torn, Lem hears Gan before he can process Fero. </p><p>“Gan Tell, Gantel Lor van der Dawes.”</p><p>“NO!” Fero’s eyes burn from Gan to Lem to their hands, clasped, “HOLD ON! THIS PIECE OF SHIT MOTHERFUCKER-”</p><p>“Wait-” Says Ephrim.</p><p>“-HAD ME LOCKED UP, TOOK SOME OF MY SHOULDER, WAS- HE- WELL MAYBE-”</p><p>Lem cries, “Fero, wait-”</p><p>“YEAH!” And when Fero’s eyes crease into one furious stare, he ignores the sting of saltwater in them. “YEAH. HI. I’m mad at every.” He flexes his hands. He chokes on his breath, letting out words one at a time in furious barks. “Every. SINGLE. Person in here!”</p><p>Lem reaches for him, “Fero,”</p><p>“What?” The sound of a hand being smacked away. “What?”</p><p>Ephrim is just staring at Fero.</p><p>Lem sputters, “Fero, no, this-”</p><p>Fero’s eyebrows are creased, and all Ephrim and Lem can see is the top of his head as he dusts himself off. Sand still sticks to the twisted curls of his hair.</p><p>“-wait? You,” Lem says to Uklan Tell, “You’re with these people?”</p><p>He sighs. “There’s always more than one way.” And the page turns to fire, from the flint and steel. But it’s just a little too damp.</p><p>“I…” Ephrim turns between the orcs and Fero, “May-”</p><p>“GOOD! NO! I’M STILL… DERATING. I’M STILL.” His voice suddenly drops low. “I was there, on the ground.”</p><p>Uklan talks over Fero, “Ephrim, if you could-”</p><p>“I was dead. And everybody.” He swallows, unable to look at them. “Everybody was just like-”</p><p>Lem talks over Fero, “Burn the paper.”</p><p>“Everybody was just. Oh, we’re worried about a book.” He smacks the mask out of Lem’s hands, “Oh, we’re worried about a mask.”</p><p>Ephrim lights his burning brand. His hands are lit with a pure, plain fire.</p><p>“Hold on!” Fero’s eyes are suddenly illuminated, “What are you setting on fire?”</p><p>And the words go up in flame. Just a simple poem about a beautiful fish seller in a market, who Tristero saw while walking away. But it was written by divine hands, and now it’s on fire. And that’s enough.</p><p>“Hi! Hey!”</p><p>And the last person Fero wants to be acknowledged by turns to him, and Gan says, “If you had just told me your friend had that book, we could have been done hours ago.”</p><p>“IF YOU HAD STOPPED.” Fero throws his arms, “TORTURING ME, AND TOLD ME YOU WERE LOOKING FOR SOME BOOK TO SET ONFIRE, MAYBE I WOULD HAVE GIVEN IT TO YOU!” He looks at the scene, unable to yell out the crawling in his skin. </p><p>He overturns a stack of books. “You goddamn.”</p><p>Good. He overturns another. “You fucking.”</p><p>He breaks an empty hourglass. He looks to the shards at his feet. “Every single person in here is a motherfucker.”</p><p>“Fero-”</p><p>But he does not hear them. He picks up the mask at his feet, clutching it with a force meant to break.</p><p>“I was lying on the ground! You were worried about a book, I was being TORTURED in there!”</p><p>Lem, “Fero!”</p><p>“What do YOU want!?”</p><p>Lem’s hair is still wet. His cuffs are still wet, the look isn’t. Well, Lem isn’t really looking at anything. He can’t look at Fero, his eyes landing on the middle-distance behind his shoulders.</p><p>Fero is furious.</p><p> </p><p>The last part of the pattern is two lodestars, both which carry the banner of the Queen of Death, one which sees the old world, and one which has destroyed some of it. And in a moment, he becomes untethered the way that Sunder had before. And the mirror that had only cracked before, shatters. And Fero falls through it. And something else falls out- two things. The room takes on a very strange cold for a moment. </p><p>Throndir is here. “Wh-what the hell?”</p><p> </p><p>Before he sees anything at all, Fero hears the sound of barking. There’s one dog very close to him, lapping at his face. As his eyes clear, he sees himself reflected back in a cracked mirror. He looks like he’d swam through a dark and endless sea, clawing his way back through the sands of low tide. And then, reflected in that mirror, is a big familiar dog. Kodiak.</p><p>“Oh, hey buddy.” Fero hears his voice like it comes from somewhere else. He reaches out for Kodiak, who cuddles instantly into his arms. They talk a bit. Kodiak gets it. </p><p>“Oh,” Fero says, finally untwining himself from the warmth of Kodiak’s neck, “You didn’t go through did you?”</p><p>Kodiak whimpers.</p><p>“I’m sure he’s okay. Ephrim’s there, he’ll help, even if. Well, Ephrim will help.”</p><p>Fero puts his hands on the mirror and doesn’t think about the cuts on them. Kodiak gives him one firm lick on his cheek, and jumps through the mirror. After his curly tail slips through, the glass falls to the floor and finally shatters.</p><p>He runs a hand through his hair, nails caught in tangles. He’s on a bank, there are some trees. Not quite a forest. Way off in the distance, there is a boat. Of course there is a boat. From it, there is another distant sound of barking. The boat drifts out of view, and he recognizes with a sharp smile the familiar glint of a looking glass. </p><p>There is a “pop!” and a black smoke whizzes through the air, Fero’s eyes following it. He takes in the environment of The Buoy; the weird towers, the double-tree, the House of First Light, and all the other things surrounding him. There is a white tower of starlight that has smashed through the sky here, as if the sky itself is mirrored and the mirror has broken. The white towers are closing in, and there are strains of the Heat and the Dark here, too, in beautiful curves. Beautiful arches, the kind of geometric shape that only great artists can achieve.</p><p>The smoke trail pops again and there is a puff of dense, black soot. It hands, signaling, just near this island. Fero turns around and sees a house behind him. </p><p> </p><p>The part of his brain that could evaluate has gone quiet, and he approaches as if in a dream, a mirror. It is leaned up against one of the tree trunks, rusted metal covering once-fine engravings of blossoming trees. Fero swallows. He blinks, rubs his eyes and face and hair. Willing, desperately, his body to feel something. To make his ears hear something other than horrible ringing.</p><p>He runs to the house.</p><p>“Hey,” He cries, voice breaking, “Hey!”</p><p>His shoulders finally sag when he enters the living room, the smell of dinner wafts around him. He collapses cross-legged on the floor, nose to his toes, back shaking, and his voice cracking out, “Hey? Hello?” </p><p>Hella is the first to stand, her posture protective until she recognizes the man folded into himself on the floor.</p><p>“Fero?” She treads silently to his side, taking a knee and patting his back.</p><p>Hadrian looks out from the dining table, a little put out. He stands and joins them.</p><p>Still clutched in Fero’s hands is Samot’s porcelain mask. He’s covered in dirt found, now, nowhere else on Hieron. He’s sobbing and, for the first time Hadrian has known, he is quiet.</p><p>A old, kind voice comes from the kitchen. “Dinner’s just about ready.”</p><p>“Is.” Fero looks up, his eyes shaking when the meet Hella’s, “Is this real?”</p><p>She gulps, “Maybe? Uh,”</p><p>“What! No! That’s not a good answer!”</p><p>“I just.” She runs a hand over her forehead, “You’re Fero.”</p><p>“Who else would I be?”</p><p>Hadrian looks out the window, “Where’s Throndir?”</p><p>“He.” Fero is glad, not for the first time, that Hadrian prefers not to look people in the eye. “He’s probably back at the Archives, with Ephrim and. With Kodiak.”</p><p>Hella props Fero up in her arms, and he lets her. She leads him to the dinner table, and he lets her. Eventually, Hadrian huffs out a breath and joins them. An old wirey man with hair like branches and black skin the texture of a gumbo limbo tree sits at the table, flakes trailing behind him. Fero does not think of dandelions. </p><p> </p><p>The man carries plates in his hands and on his arms, balanced artfully. There’s chicken, there’s greens, god. God, it smells amazing.</p><p>“Tuck in!” He says to them cheerfully, turning back to the kitchen.</p><p>Fero turns the mask around in his hands. Hella notices, and gingerly takes it from him and tucks it away in her rucksack. </p><p>“Don’t put the mask on.” He tells her.</p><p>“I won’t.” She answers.</p><p>Samol returns and sits down in front of Fero, a steaming cup of something in his hands. And he coughs lightly, takes a sip, and tells them all the rest of the story.</p><p> </p><p>“- and so, the people of Marielda gathered to rebuild again; except now, with the esoteric machines of the Father Inventor, Marielda regained itself at speed. And with speed, it changed.”</p><p>Hadrian looks lost in a serving of sweet-potatoes. Adaire sips her wine thoughtfully. Hella, her plate long since cleaned, looks around a bit at nothing in particular.</p><p>“So,” Fero asks, “With those mages. What were those masks for?” </p><p>Samol chuckles a bit, the light not reaching his eyes. “Samot built those for, well. For folks that Samot trusted to have a direct line of communication. The mages intercepted the mask that the boy Maelgwyn had and sent him to do that terrible thing.”</p><p>Fero’s eyes burn a hole through the bag where Hella had stored the mask. “I don’t want it.”</p><p>“Hm.” Samol turns something over in his head, but instead says, “I’m gonna go have a smoke. If y’all need me, I’ll be on the porch.”</p><p> </p><p>Fero looks at his plate. He hasn’t touched anything on it, but the food is still warm. The power of a god, he guesses. He picks a bit at some tomatoes, skinned and soaked in vinegars. He looks out the window where Hella is sat next to Samol. The porch looks nice, he thinks absently. It would be nice to sit on a swinging chair and smoke, looking out over some kind of weird lake. </p><p>Instead, Fero leaves out the back door. He finds a spot on the island where the cut-off is clean and dips his feet in the water. It feels thicker than other water he’s felt, and he can’t tell if that’s some weird middle-of-the-world thing, or just because so much has been taken out of him today. </p><p>He slips into the water, by the time the last of his hair sinks down he has become an eel. By the time he swims deep enough, he has become a shark. Boats and canoes pass by above him, and he is a manatee exhaling one sharp breath. The ships pass by like snapshots. One moment, the sun is rising. The next, it has set. In the distance, he sees the tall towers of Nacre. With each snapshot they get unbuilt, bit by bit, as the island sails further and further back in time. By the time Fero comes back to land he is upset to look at his hands- fully healed, nails now unbroken. He chews at them. </p><p>Hella and Hadrian are on the porch with Samol. Hella is sitting very straight, her hands clasped in her lap. Hadrian stands.</p><p> </p><p>“What happened to the pala-din?”</p><p>“You ask me again when we’re done, and I’ll tell ya.” Samol says through an exhale of smoke. </p><p>Hadrian sighs, “Alright.”</p><p>“Hey, can I get some of that?” Fero says, already reaching for the pipe.</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>Fero fumbles his hands around it, the shape different than what he is used to. The taste is better, though. The feeling is familiar, and at least now he is feeling something. Something is always better than nothing. </p><p>Fero finishes Samol’s pipe for him. Samol gives him a look, and stands to move to the living room. He dusts the living room, makes sure the books are in alphabetical order. Straightens a painting on the wall, just so.</p><p>Fero walks back inside, empties the burnt leaves into the sink. Cleans out the pipe. Cleans it delicately, perfectly, until he can muster the personhood to hand it to Samol.</p><p>“Thanks.” He says.</p><p>“Ain’t nothin’.” Samol fixes him again with a look that Fero can’t interpret.</p><p>When he can’t think of anything else to say, but knows he has to say something, Fero busies his hands with folding a blanket and tells Samol, “I think I destroyed all the beaches.”</p><p>“Sure did.” but he laughs, “It’s hard, when you’ve snapped your fingers and just made something happen.”</p><p>“I’m sorry.”</p><p>Samol takes a seat on his couch and picks up a guitar. “Uh-huh.”</p><p>Fero coughs a little, and sits again on the floor. “I didn’t realize.”</p><p>“Sure.” Samol says, his fingers pressing down and testing to put the strings in tune with one another. “You know, Fero, we’ve all got things we can’t control. Anyone says they’ve got something in order, that’s a liar. Or a fool, or both.”</p><p>Adaire, who had been happy to let herself be forgotten in the kitchen, snorts. She stands up and walks out the door.</p><p> </p><p>The water has turned back into water by the time she returns. The world has changed to the point where, now, they are going through a canal instead of a river. The architecture around them is Velasian, as big as Rosemarrow, until it’s also the City of First Light. When bits pass that are from the New Archives, Fero looks fixedly at Samol’s guitar. </p><p>She looks at the two of them, unmoved from when she had left. Rolls her eyes. </p><p>“Tell me about your family, Adaire.” Samol asks, picking out small finger patterns. </p><p>“Ugh. I was just going to say this place started looking shittier.” She rests her head in her hands.</p><p>Samol smiles, eyes on his hands. “This place is alright.”</p><p>“Velas is a shithole.”</p><p>Fero laughs. “There’s a lot of shitholes.”</p><p>Samol, then, laughs too. “One of many?”</p><p>“It’s the chief among shitholes! I don’t.” She shifts in the chair, tucking her legs under herself and shifting her skirt so it falls elegantly over the edge. “What do you want to know?”</p><p>“I just wanna hear you tell a story. What were your folks like, did they do an alright job?”</p><p>“I don’t know.”</p><p>Fero just looks at her.</p><p>“No!” She says, having made up her mind. “No, they didn't. If they’d done an alright job, I wouldn’t be on this weird… underground island.”</p><p>“Oh, you think they would’ve done a better job if they’d raised you to stay in that shithole?” Samol strums a chord, “That’s what good parenting looks like?”</p><p>“Uh… looks, there’s. It’s like you said, there’s a lot of shitholes. I don’t know, they did what they could. I don’t think it was enough. It isn’t good enough.”</p><p>“What would you have done different?” </p><p>“I mean, I did what I did different. I left.”</p><p>Fero nods. “Yeah.”</p><p>“No,” Samol corrects, “I mean if you were them.”</p><p>Adaire fiddles with her gloves, “Wouldn’t’ve gotten into that situation in the first place.</p><p>Samol smiles, shakes his head. “Life is winding up in places you did not intend to wind up in.”</p><p>“They shouldn’t’ve had so many of us, then.” She says, fire in her eyes, “Or they should’ve covered their tracks better, or paid off the neighbors, or. God, any number of things.”</p><p>Fero twists around and faces Adaire. “But you got out.” </p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I got out.”</p><p>Samol looks between them both, “I hope you find some place you don’t think is a shithole. Even if it is one. Speaking of.”</p><p> </p><p>Samol stands and walks to the window. In the distance, there is a light. The ship that casts it is not visible, yet. It’s getting closer, glowing more brightly with each passing second. </p><p> </p><p>Eventually, Hella and Hadrian come back inside. Eventually, they all settle in for the night. </p><p>And eventually, there is a loud crash. And a fight. The Blade in the Dark, which Hadrian almost splits in half until splitting it in half would mean cutting off the hand of his son.</p><p> </p><p>A healing spell Hadrian can no longer cast.</p><p>A vision of a god playing chess with a star. </p><p>Samol asks Fero if he’s ever played a guitar. </p><p>But that fucking dog comes back, of course it does. </p><p>Fero hears a woman he doesn’t recognize call Hella a Queenkiller and a traitor. And her sword, the Blade in the Dark, never stopped bleeding. </p><p> </p><p>When the anchor tries to rip the sword from her hands, she holds on with the might of the most dangerous person in the world. The clear blood pools all around her, bubbling, until Hella realizes that holding on will break the sword. She lets go, and the water turns to glass again. The vision- chimney smoke, the castle in the distance, a beautiful sun.</p><p>A pala-din strikes Hadrian through with the sword of the only person for whom he has defied his god, and when the blade snaps in half he is soaked in its water head-to-toe in baptism. And then he’s gone, and the water keeps coming. It spills out, enveloping the entire island. </p><p>Hella is up to her knees in the water, and she looks into it, and then she is gone.</p><p>Adaire yells for the dog, and then she is gone, too. </p><p>Fero, flying above them all as twenty-three brown birds, sees Samol climbing the roof of his own house. </p><p>“Are y'all always like this?” he shouts.</p><p>“Yeah!” Fero chirps, and his birds turn into one long-necked snake of a thing, and he dives in after them.</p><p> </p><p>And his cormorant eyes open to see a very green place. There is a castle on a distant hill, all grey brick and white pumice, high pointed towers, with parapets holding banners of blue and silver. A little city in front of that, built with the same material and some wood, with some brownish tiles in front of the buildings with chimneys- chimneys that are billowing out warm smoke, filtering up into the sky, carrying smells of early evening suppers. The sounds of children, not yet ready to come home from playing. And there, on the castle’s balcony, there he is. Samothes, looking out on his kingdom. On his subjects who are pleased, and loyal, and happy. And at ease in a way Fero cannot recognize. In a way none of them have ever felt.</p><p>Hadrian came through first, already on his feet. </p><p>Adaire tumbles through the green, it stains her dress and gloves. She looks up, eyes filled with fear when she sees Hella- dangling above the sky. A beautiful, dark hand encircles her wrist but the rest of that hand’s body is invisible to Adaire.</p><p>Fero cannot stop his dive fast enough to help her, he twists mid-air and witnesses Hella grab the wrist with her other hand and pull. </p><p>A beautiful woman follows the beautiful hand, her skin gleaming in the light of the sun. She is surrounded by billowing white satin, droplets of pearls circling her like moons. And it is a scene from a novel, for a moment, until all the broken junk from Samol’s house falls in after them, too.</p><p> </p><p>Hadrian has already walked away from them all, towards the castle, and towards the god who is finally knocking at his door.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Hospitable to Whom?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I hope I can make the translation here as easy as possible for you all.” Samothes tells them over a humble dinner that evening, “Everyone finds their place in Abaude eventually.”</p><p>“Oh, are we not gonna go back?” Hadrian asks, the breath still stolen from him as he comes to terms with Samothes before him.</p><p>“It’s not as simple as that, I’m afraid.”</p><p>Fero sneers from his plate of fruits, “What does that mean?”</p><p>“I will say the possibility is there. You were not killed by the blade. Which means, unlike everyone else here, this need not be your home forever.”</p><p> </p><p>Fero thinks about how he had never thought anywhere would be his home, forever. The idea makes his skin itch under the clothes Samothes had given them. It had hurt to part with what he had made himself, but the temperature in Abaude had chilled him strangely. Where Fero had always run hot, this mild temperature made the corduroy and wool of his new outfit begrudgingly.. Necessary. He nestled his chin into the cowl neck of Samothes’s sweater, eyebrows drawn together in a frown. </p><p><em>No</em>, he thinks,<em> I will not make a home here. Certainly not for forever.</em> </p><p> </p><p>When the dinner is over, Hadrian stays behind. Hella finds somewhere nice to rest. Fero doesn’t know where Adaire went, and he doesn’t really care. He does what he always does when the storm inside him threatens to break- he runs off into the forest. </p><p> </p><p>But every tree, every bush here sets him off. He rips at them, pulls them out and digs and replants them. When Samothes finds him, clothes ruined with the soft loam of Abaude, he sits gingerly down a good distance aways.</p><p> </p><p>“Are you okay?” he asks.</p><p>“Am I okay?” Fero mocks. His hands are filled with acorns, and he jabs at the ground and sticks them in one by one. “Am I okay? Asks the dead living god. Really? Shouldn’t you know if I’m okay? What with the whole god thing.”</p><p>Samothes watches Fero in his flurry for a moment. “I don’t know.”</p><p>Fero snorts. “How un-godlike.” And he scrambles up another tree. This one has some sort of apricot growing from it. Fero takes a bite, considers it, before throwing a dozen of them to the ground. He takes off the dirt-matted sweater and ties it into a sack around the fruits. He walks off, determined.</p><p>Samothes follows.</p><p>“What are you doing?”</p><p> </p><p>Fero looks over his shoulder and laughs bitterly. “Your forest sucks.” He looks around, scowling and thoughtful. He gasps a little a-ha! and breaks for an empty spot in the patches. He digs a deep hole and nests one of those orange fruits into it, a sea turtle with her eggs.</p><p>“My forest…” Samothes can’t help but smile, “Sucks?”</p><p>“Yeah absolutely.”</p><p>Samothes leans against a tree. “How so?”</p><p>Fero is still furiously digging holes in the dark. “It’s on a fucking grid system.”</p><p> </p><p>Samothes blinks. He regards the tree behind his back, takes a few steps, and finds the next tree is five paces away. As is the next. Every third tree has a bush between them. They alternate a neat pattern of oak-cedar-fruit. How had he not noticed before?</p><p> </p><p>“Are there even any birds here?” Fero looks distressed. </p><p>“No. There aren’t.”</p><p>“What the fuck. Bugs?”</p><p>“No bugs.”</p><p>“How do the flowers pollinate, then? How is there fruit if there aren’t bugs?”</p><p>“I don’t know.”</p><p> </p><p>Fero stops, he holds the final fruit in his hands. He tightens his grip without really meaning to, nectar sticking to his muddy palms. “What’s the point of being a god, then. If you don’t know a fucking thing.”</p><p>Samothes finds he cannot answer. </p><p>The next morning, Fero wakes up curled beneath the tangled roots of a mangrove on the coastline. There is a box next to the tree- simple in design, yet obviously well crafted. Fero’s eyes widen at its contents, and he cannot resist sliding his hands into the beans and seeds within it. He sighs.</p><p> </p><p>He spends a month planting. He spends two months tending. </p><p>On the first day of the fourth month in Abaude, he goes back into town.</p><p> </p><p>Samothes has long since stopped leaving clothes for him, leaving instead yards of simple fabric, yarns, needles. Eventually, Fero built a loom, and Samothes leaves him raw unprocessed wool. His clothes are his own, and he loves the stitching he has put into them. Some spots are adorned with small yarn embroideries. His hair has grown longer and curls around his ears and neck. His nails are, of course, long, broken, and thick with dirt.</p><p>He looks around at the town and finds something new he hadn’t expected- the wooden skeleton of a new building right in the middle of Cunningham street. A few people work on its construction and overseeing its construction is a short, plump woman. She wears long khaki pants tucked into brown workboots, her blouse is white and undirtied. Her blonde hair is braided loosely down her back, her hands covered in brown leather gloves. It is Adaire.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey!” Fero shouts to her. “Adaire!”</p><p>She turns, pen tapping markedly on her clipboard. “Fero? You’re still around?”</p><p>“I mean.” He snickers, “I mean can we really leave?”</p><p>“Right.” She writes something down. “Where’d you fuck off to?”</p><p>“Oh, you know.”</p><p>She scowls. “I don’t.”</p><p>“I fixed the forest. Should be better in another year or so.”</p><p> </p><p>Fero stands next to her and watches her work for a bit. After a while, she starts casting him glances.</p><p>“You smell terrible.”</p><p>“Oh?” He sniffs his armpit. “Oh yeah, hah. I do.”</p><p>“Oh my god.” She turns to walk away from him, but he follows her.</p><p>“No- hey! Where’s Hella?”</p><p>Adaire stops dead in her tracks. “Why should I know?”</p><p>“I’ve heard you usually know things.” Fero twirls a lock of his hair.</p><p>“Ugh.” Adaire throws her arms to her side. “Listen, I’ve got a lot of work to do. She’s probably at the pier.”</p><p>“Thank you!” He smiles and runs off, not hearing her continued frustrations.</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t find Hella until another week has passed. </p><p> </p><p>Her hair is done into fine twisted braids, the red of it cast orange by the sun. She is hunched over in her boat, latched firmly to the pier. In her right hand is some sort of wood, in her left is a knife. She is muttering to herself, “Hm. no, maybe off the top? Or the sides… how do you even do this…” until she shaves off the whole top half of her sculpture and yelps out, “Fuck!”</p><p>“Hello!” Fero calls. </p><p>She starts a little bit in a very Hella-like way. A funny grin breaks out on her face when she sees him. “Oh, Fero. Hey.”</p><p>He takes several long steps down the pier, the hot wood warm on his bare feet. He sits on the edge of the pier, the strip of water between his feet and the edge of her boat lit up white and glowing. </p><p>“What’s up?” he asks.</p><p>“Oh, you know.” She rubs beads of sweat off her forehead. “Same old same old.”</p><p>“Whittling?"</p><p>She laughs, “Trying to.”</p><p>“You’ll have to be more gentle.”</p><p>“I’m.” She blinks like she is talking more about her personality than her craft, “I’m trying to be.”</p><p>He hums and dips a toe into the water. “What’s going on with Adaire?”</p><p>Hella looks at him like he has two heads. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“You know her better than I do, I dunno. She seemed like she knew bullshit when she saw it, but now she’s building a house here? Really, a house?”</p><p>“God, she-” Hella’s arms drop. “She isn’t building a house, she’s building a store.”</p><p>“A store? What is she going to sell?”</p><p>“She’s going to sell everyone else’s stuff, but from one store, so you don’t have to, like-” Hella waves her hands, the knife glinting in the light, “Go. To all the stores.”</p><p>“What the fuck?”</p><p>“It’s normal, in cities.”</p><p>“Cities are fucking weird. Also, this isn’t a city?”</p><p>Hella laughs. “Yeah- god. This isn’t a city.”</p><p> </p><p>They sit in silence for a minute. Eventually, Hella hands Fero the block of wood and her knife. He works at it absently while she watches the sun set.</p><p> </p><p>“I missed you.” She says.</p><p>“Oh, yeah?” </p><p>“Yeah. I have all this.” She looks at her hands, turning them over, clenching and unclenching her fists. “I have all this energy and nowhere to put it. I’ve tried like, thirty different hobbies. None of them really scratch the itch.”</p><p>Fero holds up the statue he is carving, one eye closed and the other squinted. “You could ask Hadrian to swordfight you?”</p><p>“I did. Too many times. All he wants to do is talk to Samothes.”</p><p>“I hate paladins.”</p><p>Hella laughs, “Yeah, god, why’s my best friend a paladin?”</p><p>Fero rests a foot on her boat and gives it a push. “Hey.” He tosses the statue back to her. “I thought I was your best friend.”</p><p>She laughs and says without thinking, “You were Lem’s best friend!” and then her hand closes around his carving and she says, “Oh, Fero. I’m-”</p><p> </p><p>But he’s already mostly gone by then. He waves without looking back and calls out, “No, you’re good.”</p><p> </p><p>She doesn’t see him for another six months, when he shows up for the opening of Ducarte’s.</p><p>His hair is past his shoulders now, curls bouncing when he walks in. He’s tried to dress up, but Fero is still Fero, after all, and beneath his cuffed sleeves and wool vest and clean-ish pants, his feet are still bare. Adaire glares at him when he walks in like that.</p><p>“You must be here to buy some new shoes.” She says, dripping with venom.</p><p>“What?” He smiles wide, “No, I’m here to say hello to my good friend Hella Varal.” </p><p>And there she is, haphazardly wrapping a picture frame in thin, brown parchment paper. </p><p>“You simply must try on our shoes. They’re the finest in town.”</p><p>“Of course they are, there’s only one cobbler.” </p><p>“Fero.”</p><p>“Adaire.”</p><p> </p><p>She lifts her chin, faint colors peeking out from her collar, “Ms. Ducarte.”</p><p>“Ooooooh!” He waves his hands. “Ms. Ducarte. Yes. Of course.” He curtsies to her, all sarcasm.</p><p>“Here.” She huffs and brings him, honestly, a pretty nice pair of shoes. Well-made and appropriate for the amount of walking he does. Just his size, too. She hands them to him, along with a pair of thin socks.</p><p>He smiles to her, and sits directly on the floor to put them on. </p><p> </p><p>“Ugh! God, Hella!” She looks desperately for Hella, who is still trying to wrap that frame. It has three pieces of paper taped to it, yet one corner in the middle remains uncovered. The customer in front of her looks near-tears as he watches Hella gingerly use a knife  to cut a small section of paper to tape directly over the hole.</p><p>“Okay, how do they look? They feel heavy.” Fero asks, standing.</p><p>“God, they.” Adaire puts her head in her hands, “They look great. Thank you. Thank you for wearing shoes inside my very nice and very new department store. That’ll be twenty silver.”</p><p>“Oh, I don’t have any money.” Fero smiles and starts taking off the shoes, bouncing on one foot to wrestle them off, “Here, let me just-”</p><p>“NO!” Adaire shouts. “No. No, no bare feet in my store. No. Keep them. God, keep them, they’re free.”</p><p>“Thank you, Adaire.”</p><p>“Please leave.”</p><p> </p><p>Fero gives a wave to Hella, who is proudly presenting the worst wrapped frame in history to a very terrified customer. She notices him a moment later, and beams when she waves back.</p><p>“I get off at eight!” She shouts to him.He gives two thumbs-up and walks backwards out the door, immediately taking his new shoes off when he is outside.</p><p> </p><p>For the next couple months, it becomes a ritual between the two of them. Eventually, the second year turns to the third. Fero hangs around outside Ducarte’s every Ontday. Hella follows him into the forest, where they pick fresh fruits and talk about the growth rates of blueberry bushes. About Hella’s new art. About calligraphy she has started practicing. Eventually, about Adelaide.</p><p> </p><p>“She’s been flirting with you? Neat.”</p><p>Hella bites too hard into her apple, getting her bottom lip a bit with the action. “No! I mean, yes? A bit?”</p><p>“Didn’t you kill her?”</p><p>“Yeah.” </p><p>Fero sighs. “I mean, that’s pretty romantic.”</p><p>“What the fuck.” She laughs, and so does Fero.</p><p>“I thought you and Adaire were… a thing?”</p><p>“Adaire?” Hella leans back until her head hits the soft ground beneath her. She looks up at the sky through the canopy. “I mean. That could be something, but I. I don’t know.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“She said it was strange to see me without the sword. Adelaide did, I mean.”</p><p>“Hm.” Fero takes a bite of his apple and leans back on the grass with her. “It is. You gonna get a new one?”</p><p>“She asked that, too.”</p><p>“Yeah, what did you say?”</p><p>“I said I didn’t think it was appropriate.”</p><p>“Fair.”</p><p> </p><p>A moment passes between them.</p><p> </p><p>“Have you transformed? Since we got here.”</p><p>“Oh.” Fero blinks. “No. I’m not sure if it works here?”</p><p>“Didn’t you ever try?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p> </p><p>She turns over to look at him. Fero’s beard has grown thick, but not long. The tips of his ears still stick out from his hair. He doesn’t look mad all the time, which is maybe worse, when she knows he is.</p><p>“Why not?” She breathes.</p><p>He doesn’t answer.</p><p>“What happened, Fero? At the Archives, you never talk about it.”</p><p>“Nothing to talk about.”</p><p>“Sure there is.” </p><p>“No.” He mutters, turning away from her. “There isn’t.”</p><p>“Okay.” She sits up and looks at him fondly. “Maybe another time?”</p><p> </p><p>He breathes in one long breath and holds it. Exhales like he is counting for how long he can.</p><p>“Yeah. Maybe another time.”</p><p> </p><p>The year ends with a party on Hella’s boat. It would be fireworks, in Rosemarrow. It would have been fireworks. But here, the star Chapter- who Hella killed- stands on the boat she named Queenkiller, and they test something. It’s like a shell, a glowing piece of themself that briefly surrounds the island. It’s beautiful, really, shimmering like a cloak of stars that covers everything. In the night, it just looks like the sky is full of stars. And it isn’t real, of course, because Chapter is still here and alive, and in the distance there is the flash of lightning and the rumbling thunder that follows. Hella rights the ship when the tide pulls on it, and she feels it in the tide. This place is desperate to be swallowed by the storm. </p><p> </p><p>The first Ontday of their fourth year in Abaude, Adaire is waiting for him.</p><p>“We have to talk.” She demands.</p><p>“Oh Kay.”</p><p>“Come on. Wait.” She sneers at him, “You brought your shoes, right?”</p><p>“Oh!” His eyes widen, “Oh! Shit!” And he runs off.</p><p> </p><p>When he comes back, she has already gone inside. A single candle lit in the window lets him know she’s still in there. </p><p>He opens the door, the chime above dinging in a nice, pentatonic way. “He-ello?”</p><p>“Fero."</p><p>“Adaire.” He squints, and notices she is seated at the cash counter, a plate of danishes and a cup of tea next to her.</p><p>“How are you?”</p><p>“I-” He takes a bite of the danish, “Didn’t think you cared?”</p><p>She sighs. “I don’t.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“But. It’s itchy, isn’t it?” She looks around, trying to find words. “It feels itchy even though there aren’t any bugs.”</p><p>“It feels itchy because there aren’t any bugs!” He emphasizes his point with a gesture of the danish, spilling some jelly on the counter. </p><p>She glares at him, and hands him a rag, looking pointedly between him and the jelly he had spilled. He sheepishly wipes it up.</p><p>“I think there should be…” She phrases carefully, “More bugs.”</p><p>“You know how to make bugs?”</p><p>“No.” She puts her head in her hands. “I think there might already be some bugs here, which just aren’t biting.”</p><p>Fero blinks. “Oh, <em>YOU’RE</em> the bugs!”</p><p>“God, Fero-” She takes a sip of her tea. “Yes, Fero. I’m the bugs. You’re also the bugs, I think.”</p><p>“I’ve been a bug once or twice.”</p><p> </p><p>They look at each other, Adaire’s frustration finally overtaking her desire to remain covert.</p><p> </p><p>“You know, I brought Samothes some pearl arm bands to ask if he would endorse them. He liked the clasp design, he said… He said I had a talent for synthesis. I guess that was nice, but then he said, ‘There is nothing about this place, nothing, that is impossible out there. We just failed to make that world.’”</p><p>“Hm. Who’s we?”</p><p>“Powerful people. Gods. Opportunists.”</p><p>“Oh. Yeah.”</p><p>She cuts to the point. “This place is too complacent and I think we should fuck it up a little bit.”</p><p>“Oh.” Fero looks at her in a new light. “Agreed.”</p><p>“You kept tearing up that forest, I thought you’d agree. It’s terrible. Nothing is real. This. This place!” She gestures to the store around her, “I love it, but it isn’t real. I could’ve never really done this.”</p><p>“I dunno, maybe.”</p><p>“No. You know what I did, Fero? I rolled into town in the middle of the night with a cart full of junk and then I split as soon as I made a profit. Or as soon as I got found out, whichever came first.”</p><p>Fero nods along absently.</p><p>“So you wanna stir something up?”</p><p>She breathes. “Yeah, Fero, I want to stir something up.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Material Effort</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It starts with small sabotage. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The axle on that cart looks loose. What would happen, if she just… pushed it a little bit? What would happen? And, of course, the predictable thing happens. The wheel falls off and the cart has to be fixed. It’s a little annoying.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And she keeps doing it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And things keep breaking. The hammer is always in the right place, never quite breaking all the way. It gets fixed, it gets repaired. But it does cost time, it takes energy. Lots of people get very annoyed, enough to have a meeting about it. Enough that the church starts talking about it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What does time and energy mean in a place where you decide when you die? You have all the time in the world, here. Those who were born and raised in the sword remain complacent, knowing that, for as long as they want it, there will always be a tomorrow. But those who Hella sent through, and the generation before them? They’re angry. There’s a divide in the community, for a while. People who desperately cling to their life of leisure, convinced that this is a major inconvenience. How are they stuck in traffic in a place without traffic? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Adaire takes the opportunities. Not to explicitly make anyone unhappy, per se. But to scratch that itch. To be the Thief. Not a compulsion, just a hobby. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Evening the cosmic scale.” She says to Fero one afternoon as they are strolling through the forest. She breaks a branch and tosses it in the way of the path behind them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm.” He runs ahead, climbs a tree, and shakes leaves down on her as she passes. “Even for who?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-” Adaire swats the foliage out of the way. “What do you mean?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, the scale is, like. For people? So if you’re evening the scale, you think it’s unfair. Right? Who’s it unfair to?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s a big question.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve had a long time to think.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She purses her lips and keeps walking. They reach the shore of a small lake and she sits in the soft grass. “I guess.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You guess?” Fero pulls out the basket of fruit he brought for them and bites into a strawberry the size of a papaya. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm” Adaire looks very cross with herself. “Okay, but you have to keep this to your damn self.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fero laughs. “Cross my heart.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If I. Here, in this place, I have a successful business and I can take care of myself. Which is, like, the most I’ve ever been able to do? Anywhere.” She pulls her braid over her shoulder and tugs at it. “And, I guess.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You guess?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She snaps at him, “Shut up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fero waves his arms in apology and gestures for her to continue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What if I could take care of my family? You know? What if I could do those other things I’ve never been able to do? It’s. It’s unfairness to  the people who aren’t here, who don’t to benefit from the… This place, this support. A close and compassionate god.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fero picks at his hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Everyone out there is dealing with the end of the world and I’m selling tartes named after myself.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They are silent with each other for a long time. Adaire rips pieces out of the soft flesh of the fruit Fero picked for them and throws chunks piece by piece into the lake. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I gouged the waterproofing out of Hella’s boat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She looks at the sky. “You heard me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She.” Adaire chews her lip. “She wrote me a thank-you card. For everything. For how nice I’ve been to her, I guess. I didn’t think I’ve been very nice. She said it’s been great here. So did I, but-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t really think that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, god. I don’t. I don’t really think that. I have no effect on anything, I’ve never had effect on anything. Every nice thing here fills me with guilt.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why’d you lie, then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-” Adaire pulls pieces of grass from the ground. “I was hoping she was lying, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you fucked up her boat?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, so I fucked up her boat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fero looks absently at the little hole she has dug. “Hella likes you a lot, why would you do that to her?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess. I wanted her to know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You could just tell her?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adaire looks at him like he has two heads. “They’re giving sermons at the church about the perils of selfishness. Because of me. You know, the last thing we broke gave me splinters. This isn’t fun, we aren’t having fun.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m having a little bit of fun.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it’s the loudest Fero has heard Adaire get when she demands, “Are you?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hm.” He smiles. “No. I’m completely isolated, there’s no animals. Samothes offered to make me a mountain to live in, but what’s the point if… just some guy made that mountain. What’s the point? When I first left Rosemarrow, and I went to the hills and the mountains. I was like, okay. Yes. This is it. I’m the hermit. But the thing about hermits is that, to be a hermit, eventually you have to go back?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that the thing with hermits?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes!” He jumps up and starts pacing. “Yes! Absolutely! And I always did that- I left, I thought about things. I studied plants and animals and then I was animals and I mean, I haven’t been plants, but there’s time. My whole shoulder is made of rock, why couldn’t I be a plant? I can talk to plants!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fero, what-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But I always went back! Nobody ever comes back for me, but even-” He shouts one unintelligible yell, “Even when I would fuck off, I always came back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll. Fero, are you-” She can’t say the rest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks at her, tears in his eyes. “Of course I am. Adaire. Of course I am.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He jumps into the lake. The splash leaves dark dots on Adaire’s light blue dress, and she scoffs a bit. It would be unfair for her to get mad at the inconvenience, wouldn’t it? When her whole thing is about fairness, now?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fero surfaces enough to let his nose stick above the water, long dark hair slicked down and floating around him. Adaire makes fun of him. He laughs and splashes her. They laugh. Eventually he clambers out of the pond, his sopping clothes weighing him heavily to the dirt.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Adaire, I loved him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She nods and does not say anything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I loved him and he never understood me. You know, he- God. This sucks, Adaire, this sucks so bad. He would always need things for his fucking patterns and I would always help him get them. And you can’t- Some of those things. You can’t just get them super easy. Done. Yaknow? No. It’s like, fucking-” His voice twists into an impression, “Oh, Fero, I need the loving gaze of a newborn fawn. I need a single tear shed from stubbing a toe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adaire laughs. “What the fuck?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No! Adaire, no! Really, that’s real. That-” He pulls at his hair. “That was a real one and I stubbed my toe for him ON PURPOSE! To make myself cry a bit for his goddamn pattern. And it didn’t even work!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It didn’t work?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“NO!” He throws his legs up and flops them back down. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm.” Adaire hates wizard shit. But she does like her friend. “Why?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fero frowns. Then he scowls. Then he looks incredible, deeply sad. “He said the pattern thought it was a tear shed for something else.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know what, Adaire.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Later that week, the spot where they had rested has been dug up and changed to be a bit less comfortable. Fero knows Adaire did it because she cares. He hopes Hella will understand, too.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hella, as it turns out, does not understand. When she finds her boat is broken, she blamed herself. When Adaire offered to help fix it, she was grateful for a friend. When Adaire reminded Hella to fix a part she didn’t know was broken… well. Not wanting to believe something doesn’t make it not true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wanting to disbelieve something doesn’t make it false?” Fero asks, interrupting Hella’s spiral.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes? I think?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re sitting in the canopy of a large oak tree, and if Hella had been any less upset she might have thought differently about climbing it. But she was mad, and she tackled the tree with brute force behind Fero’s fluid swings and pulled herself up with the sheer power of her body. When they reached the apex, she had been out of breath in a way she hasn’t been in four and a half years, and kept the feeling of gratitude to herself as she ranted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought we were cool! I thought- You know. Hadrian is having such a horrible time. So I go and I see Hadrian. Adaire needs help at the store, so I go and help Adaire. You disappear for all but a couple hours a week, so of course I’m gonig to make time for you. I wrote cards. I wrote cards for everybody and I miss my fucking sword. I was built to be great at using a sword, but there’s noone to kill in here, and HOW. How does Adaire think people need to have more of a hard time? Isn’t this time hard enough?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey! I didn’t get a card!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fero!” She sighs. “Yes. Yes, you did, I just. I have it in my bag, hold on.” She hugs the tree with one strong arm and reaches into her satchel to pull out a small envelope.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” He takes it from her. “Can I open it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean that’s, yeah, that’s kind of the point.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He opens it. The off-white cardstock is slightly warped from moisture, but its decorations are unsmudged. Her handwriting inside is neat and sincere.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Fero,</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I am sorry I did not realize sooner that your frustrations were because you have always been focused on the bigger picture. In Nacre, you knew the trial was useless at the face of invasion. You put practical research before personal feelings, and I’m sorry people don’t look hard enough past how you say things to actually hear what you’re saying. I’m sorry you aren’t always people’s first choice. I’m grateful for our time together, and that we are rebuilding our relationship. Thank you for listening to me whine about women. If you need to whine about men sometime, let me know.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hella.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And he doesn’t really know what to say, after that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So the year passes like that: Adaire talks with Fero about Hella. Hella talks with Fero about Adaire. The women don't get much better at talking to each other. Fero starts to talk, to himself, about… Well. About lots of things.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Until it’s the fifth year in Abaude, and he really can’t put off talking to Hadrian any longer.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The bit about the pattern is inspired by a twitter conversation between Joey and Arp and I.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Try to Live a Good Life</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you to Phani for beta-reading the Hadrian scenes.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hadrian looks like shit. There’s no nice way of saying it. The first few years of helping with the church of Sabinia have lost their luster. He’s an unlacquered table, rings of the glasses people have rested on him left across his surface. Signs that he’s grown old, grey by his ears. New wrinkles by his eyes. His beard grows in with little patches of white in the wires. But most of all, he looks exhausted. </p><p>Fero finds him in the dining hall talking to Samothes, and decides to wait for a good moment to make his presence known. Hadrian’s got a large pack next to him. His voice is full of despair. </p><p>“Why… Why aren’t we doing anything? Why can’t we leave?”</p><p>Samothes is hidden from Fero’s view, so he can’t tell what he looks like when he says, “Yeah, we tried. It’s not that we didn’t try. It’s that we tried for years and years and years and instead decided to make a place that we could be content with.”</p><p>“Right, but like, is there something I could be doing?”</p><p>“Yeah, of course.”</p><p>“What is it? What more could I do- I need to know who has the sword. I need- I need them to find my wife. I have to know Rosana and Benjamin are safe.”</p><p> </p><p>Fero leaves, then. That conversation isn't for him and he can always find Hadrian later. He finds a nice spot a ways away from the castle and settles in to wait. He is drowsy by the time Hadrian comes back out, the pack strapped to his back, as he heads to the docks. Fero follows, dismissing the urge to slink along as a cat.</p><p>“Hey!” He calls out, once they are far enough away from the castle to feel comfortable. “Hadrian!”</p><p>Hadrian looks over his shoulder, and looks surprised to see Fero behind him, gives a polite nod, but he doesn’t slow his pace. </p><p>“Hadrian! Stop, wait up!” Fero scampers up to him, and tries to match his strides. Two Fero steps for each Hadrian step.</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>“Wow, cold.”</p><p>“Sure. Alright.”</p><p>“Hadrian, what’s up?”</p><p>“What do you think?”</p><p>“Um.” Fero scratches behind his ear. “We’re going to the docks?”</p><p>Hadrian shoots him an incredulous look. </p><p>Fero blinks, “What?”</p><p>“You’ve completely forgotten, haven’t you?”</p><p>“I mean. There’s a lot to remember.”</p><p>“With my son.”</p><p>“Oh.” </p><p>“Yeah.” And Hadrian has never really sounded rueful before, but he does now. </p><p> </p><p>The deep blue of the sky surrounds them, a bright white shape at the end of the dock coming into view. </p><p> </p><p>“What’s Chapter doing here?” And Fero shoots ahead to greet the star.</p><p>“Oh, Fero?” Their childish echoed voice chimes from the end of the dock. “Are you here to wait with Hadrian?”</p><p>“What’s he waiting for?” Fero glances over his shoulder to see Hadrian has made it within earshot, “What are you waiting for?”</p><p>“He is waiting for his ship home.” Chapter answers.</p><p>“Oh. There’s one of those coming?”</p><p>Hadrian drops his pack and looks straight ahead. Fero looks at him, looks at Chapter, and nods one. Nods several more times.</p><p>After a long while, Hadrian says, “I don’t think it’s gonna come today.”</p><p>“No.” Chapter answers. “Mine either. I cannot shake the thought of my old duty.”</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>The star points their head upwards, “I did not know what the world was, then. I only had a loose understanding of what was in it. And now I am here.”</p><p>“Sorry about that.”</p><p>Chapter makes a ringing noise like claves, like laughter, “You made it hard to see, but did not strike the killing blow. You need not apologize. The one who should already has.”</p><p>Fero runs a hand over the note he has kept in his pocket. “Do you guys think we’re getting out of here?"</p><p>“You two could. Perhaps. I am more concerned about other things getting in here.”</p><p>Hadrian’s eyebrows draw together. “The Heat and the Dark.”</p><p>“It will reach here, too. Eventually.”</p><p>Fero asks, “What are you going to do?” at the same time as Hadrian asks, “Will the people here be safe?” They give each other a look. Hadrian’s glare softens, a bit.</p><p>“I was not meant to work alone. We were meant to build a new world in Hieron, together. One that could survive the Heat by creating something new.”</p><p>Fero’s ears perk up, “New like what?”</p><p>“New like.” Chapter tilts its head, “Something resilient, made of my own self. Made of something holy, but different in the way that this land is holy. The land here, too, is made of Old Hieron, of Samol. The idea would be to double this island, to make a duplicate. New life could thrive on it, but I do not think his magic and his life would be able to survive it. That is my fear, that this world would perish in favor of a new one. I have grown to love quite a lot of this world.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Hadrian agrees, “I’m really only interested in solutions that are good for the people who already exist.”</p><p>“There is a second option.”</p><p>Fero sits on the dock, facing away from the star and the paladin.</p><p>“I could sacrifice what is left of myself, in order to assure that nothing ever enters here again. Yet, nothing would ever leave.”</p><p>Hadrian exhales harshly. “Not thrilled about that, either.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Fero agrees.</p><p>“You want to leave, too? Would’ve thought you were fine, the way you’re acting.” Hadrian says.</p><p>“I’d be a pretty big hypocrite if I didn’t go back” Fero’s tone turns self-depreciating. “How can I complain about people being wrong if I don’t try to do what’s right?”</p><p>“Hah. Right. Of course.”</p><p>The three of them listen to the sound of the waves. Hadrian clears his throat. “What does Samothes think? About… all this.”</p><p>“I suppose that is a conversation best had with him directly. Do you have any ideas, Hadrian? About the Heat and the Dark?”</p><p>“No, I don’t… I don’t know that I can be productive in that vein, I’m… I’m more of a blunt instrument.”</p><p>Fero laughs out a short, “Heh.”</p><p>A thoughtful, low synthetic buzzing comes from Chapter. “I have found this island is a whetstone. Sharpen yourself on it.”</p><p>“Sure. I’ll do my best.”</p><p>“Hadrian,” Fero stands and turns to face them, “I think I know something we can do. Chapter, have you seen that building in the wheat field?"</p><p>“I have. It will take me a week to prepare.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Visit me again in a week, Hadrian. I think Fero is right.”</p><p> </p><p>Fero and Chapter meet in the early morning at the Shrine of Sabinia and trek deep into the wheat fields behind it, chatting along the way.</p><p> </p><p>“So, do you eat?” He asks the star.</p><p>“I do not need to.”</p><p>“Me neither, but I still like to.”</p><p>“I suppose I will have to try.”</p><p>“I’ll bring some snacks for you, tomorrow.”</p><p> </p><p>They sit in the basement of an apartment in the center of the wheat field, tools scattered between them. Cleaning supplies, mostly. A pile of peeled-off moss swept to the stairwell. Fero learns rather quickly that the roll of a marimba means Chapter is content. Low vibrations mean they are thinking, silence means they are angry. And, delightfully, wind chimes and claves mean Chapter is laughing. </p><p> </p><p>It is this kind of sound that comes from Chapter as they say, “A giant poisonous vole?”</p><p>“I know! I know, I really meant mole, but it was too late. I was too into it that I fully forgot about the whole difference there.”</p><p>“But it still worked?”</p><p>“Yes!”</p><p>“That’s delightful. There is so much about that world I wish I could have learned first-hand. I wish I could have seen your vole, Fero.”</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, me too.”</p><p>Low humming. “Can you not do it anymore, here?”</p><p>“I. I haven’t tried.”</p><p>“Heiron himself is not here, but much of the ground is still of his body. You might be able to manage something. I have made some fish, you know.”</p><p>“You know how to make fish?”</p><p>Twinkling glockenspiels. “Yes! They were, of course, made of me. But they were shaped like fish.”</p><p>“Hm.”</p><p> </p><p>When the room is clean, they lead Hadrian to it. Chapter explains that if he prays, speaks, writes, tries to communicate with all his will, there is a chance that whoever wields the sword will hear what he is saying. </p><p> </p><p>“Of course,” explains Chapter, “I am unsure if it will work while the blade is still broken. And unsure of who will hear your message.”</p><p>Hadrian runs his hands over the carvings in the walls. “Yeah that’s tricky, isn’t it?”</p><p>Chapter’s oblong head turns towards Fero when they say, “I find it is better to speak, than remain silent.” and Fero smiles.</p><p>“Thank you. Both of you. For this.”</p><p>The three of them awkwardly stand there, because they don’t know. There’s so much not knowing. But, at least, now there is this private space. There is a chance.</p><p>Hadrian coughs a bit. “I can’t just tell them to find my wife, can I?”</p><p>“Probably dangerous.” Fero says.</p><p>“Yeah, no.” Hadrian scratches his beard. “Throndir?”</p><p>“Ephrim?”</p><p>“I think Throndir.”</p><p>“Alright.” Fero kicks at the ground, but there is nothing to scatter.</p><p> </p><p>Fero leaves first, but hears a ringing behind him that makes him slow his pace and smile.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey, Chapter, what’s up?”</p><p>“Fero, come with me.” And their tall bright body leads Fero to the docks again, down the pier. </p><p>Chapter tests the water, sloshing into it and emitting a few tones of the chalumeau clarinet.</p><p>“What?” Fero laughs, shucking off his shirt to jump in after the star, “Is it cold?”</p><p>“I do not know-” Fero jumps in. “-You will have to tell me!"</p><p>Fero emerges and shakes his head like a dog, “Yes! Chapter, it is VERY cold!” </p><p>“I could not have warned you.”</p><p>“I know, I know!” Fero’s teeth chatter in his smile. </p><p> </p><p>Chapter lifts their arms and feels around for a bit before calling out to Fero, leading him to a high sand bar. It is almost worse to be outside of the water, Fero spitting curses at the bite of the wind and deciding the water is better, actually. The sound of bells surrounds them as they wade further and further into the sea.</p><p> </p><p>“Fero, I wanted to show you something. Look.”</p><p> </p><p>The lights come from far away, slinking and swimming towards Fero and the star. When they arrive, it is like they are standing in the sky itself, schools of tiny minnows of star stuff surrounding them. They swirl in shoals, some close enough to nibble at Fero’s toes.</p><p> </p><p>“You made all this?” He asks in awe.</p><p>“Yes!” Sleigh bells. “My purpose is to make something new. I made a large eel out of pearls, but it is for Hella and Adelaide. I wanted to show you these and I wondered after hearing your stories if your ability to make things disappear meant you could make things appear, too. Would you try, Fero?”</p><p>“I-” Fero stands on the sand bar, rising out of the water he had crouched into. “I guess. I guess it’s about time.”</p><p>“What will you become?”</p><p>“I don’t-” Fero looks at the little stellar tetras making constellations around them. “I guess a dolphin or something?”</p><p>“Is a dolphin new?”</p><p>“Um.” Fero laughs at his friend, “No, I guess not. Um. Hm. Something new.”</p><p> </p><p>Fero flops backwards into the water, startling away some of the fish. They quickly swirl back around him, and he is adrift in the night sky. He looks at the only star that matters and asks, “What would you like to see?”</p><p> </p><p>Chapter makes a noise Fero can’t put his finger on and says, “A friend for my fish?”</p><p>“Oh, they have to be friends?”</p><p>“We are friends.”</p><p> </p><p>Fero laughs again and feels some butterflies in his stomach, and they give him an idea. He thinks about them, their feeling. The fluttering and warmth of that feeling, and what it would look like swimming with the fish. And, in a moment, he is a monarch in the sea. And around him is his own swarm, flitting and flirting with Chapter’s minnows. </p><p> </p><p>And in this year that passes, Fero fills the forest with new birds. When Fero brings her a bright, perfumed beetle Adaire insists again that her bug metaphor was a bug metaphor and not a desire for real bugs. But she smiles, anyway. When he tells Hella about his idea for a horse that’s also a guy, she tells him he should ask Hadrian for what it should say. To his great surprise, Hadrian is delighted by the idea, and tells Fero it has to ask how the weather is, what’s for dinner, and- very important- what’s new and exciting.</p><p>Samothes has some ideas, the designer he is, about the patterns the bugs should chew in the leaves and about the types of hide the beats should produce. Of course, they should be able to be shorn. When Samothes's face melts when he sees for the first time a small sugar-glider cat, Fero keeps that smile to himself. </p><p> </p><p>Hadrian runs to them, finally, after months of calling for Throndir, to shout that he has seen, in the dancing lights of the communication room, a dandelion. </p><p> </p><p>And Fero says, for the first time in five full years, “Lem.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Something You've Practiced</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Samothes made Hella a tracksuit. He asked Adaire to deliver a letter to his dad, but he made Hella a black and gold tracksuit. Adaire is complaining about it on the boat, her hand running tenderly along the piping. Her eyes are always appraising, but her soft touches say something else.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It had taken Samothes, too, to lead Hadrian out of the communication room. Hadrian’s eyes also say something his body does not, his stride carries him from a dream but his eyes are sharp. He leans heavily into Samothes’ side, and there is a new sword hung on his belt. When they approach the pier, Samothes bent down to whisper.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Promise me you will not get out there and consign yourself to living well. You have done many things to help people, but there are times that you hide behind a desire for safety. Or behind the shield of loss. The end will find us whether we cower or not. There is no reason to be fearful. So, above all else, try to live a good life.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hadrian nods, “I promise.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You ready? You have any questions? I’m sure you have a lot. I’m sure I…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I don’t have any questions you can answer. I… I… I would just ask you everything. I want to know what to do. I… what you would have me do when I get back? What do I do after that? I would… I would ask you all of the things I’ll never be able to ask you again. But I hear you. I have to do it on my own now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Samothes’s face warms, “You don’t have to do it on your own now.” He pats Hadrian’s shoulders and looks at the people gathered at the pier. “You’re about to get on a boat with Hella and Fero and Adaire, and I’ve seen through this sword. I don’t know it all, but I see the sort of people you’re surrounded by. I see… I don’t know, but I’ve seen the son that you have. I’ve seen Rosana. Protect your friends, care for them, lead them. And let them do the same for you. Take it from me, do not do anything alone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hadrian covers Samothes’s hand with his own. “Thank you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hella stands with Adelaide, a painful breath apart. Adalaide can’t come with them. Even Samothes doesn’t know what happened to that liminal space she came from. It could be nothing, now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And, besides,” She says, a delicate hand tracing Hella’s jaw, “I found what I wanted. I wanted a world like this. And I admit, I was a little messy in how I wanted to bring it about, but this is a place where people can live their lives for as long as they want. And I’m not queen here,” Hella laughs through a sob, “But nothing’s perfect.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hella looks stubbornly away. “I mean, it’s your life to live. It is what it is. Whatever. I mean, it’s fine. It’s fine. You don’t have to come back. I mean, the people outside can’t live their lives as long as they want, and like, I thought, you know, if you think of yourself as all powerful and clever and smart or whatever, you might want to come back and like…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not gonna tease me into this, Hella.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hella looks back, face scrunched together. “You don’t know that.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s weird, after Hella teases her into it, how close Adelaide’s luggage set was. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Fero watches everyone board the Queenkiller and turns to Chapter by his side. Chapter runs a hand against Fero’s arm and the sound is so melancholy. Chimes in the faintest breeze, over a single low, wooden pulsing. The sound of a heart breaking.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You have to get on another boat, Fero.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He exhales, wet and heavy. “I know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hermits have to go back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know. That’s the whole thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chapter kneels down by his side and says, “Turn around.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fero does. Chapter cards through his hair, pulling it back into a low ponytail.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“One of them passed, and it left behind its wings. I dried them. Adaire helped me make this.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When they are done, Fero reaches back and feels a braided tie holding his hair back, with one long charm attached to it. The charm is long enough that he can see it when he stretches, monarch wings of the fish he had made glinting golden in the grey stormy light of the sea.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Chapter.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am not you, Fero. I cannot go back. Thank you for showing me light and color, thank you for telling me what apple pie tastes like. Thank you for making new things with me. I hope you will bring something new to them, too. And when you get back, if you meet my father... Give him a chance. For me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fero can’t say anything. He just nods. Chapter holds his hand all the way to the boat. The star-stuff doesn’t feel like death anymore, it doesn’t feel like heat or absense or screeching. It feels like home. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Why’d I have to be this guy who always leaves his home?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The storm is here and it’s time to go. They set sail, the waves are rocky and the lightning is striking off the water in the ever-closing distance. Chapter unfolds their wings from the shore and Fero can’t look anymore. Adaire rests a hand on his shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hella captions the ship, all these years having felt a storm and disconnection, and righting herself. She leans into it, this force that is pulling them. Heading straight into the danger she defies. They have to go into the storm. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are we supposed to get hit by the lightning?” Adaire shouts, hair whipping around her face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know!” Hella cries through gritted teeth, her arms working the sails tirelessly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re doing great!” And Hadrian huddles closer. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The lightning strikes, and it strikes closer and closer. And the thunder is roaring. They’re in the sea, and they look back at Abaude one more time. And the lightning strikes, and it is gone. There’s a current that takes the boat. Hella looks back, looks forward, and realizes they are no longer even on the sea. They’re on a river, just outside of the university’s environment. Just past… And they can see the shimmering shield of the university. It looks like the one Chapter showed them inside, except here it’s surrounding all the towers and walls of the university off in the distance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>They’re on this boat, in this river, and not in the sword. They don’t know where the sword is. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Fero shouts, “YES!” At the same time Adaire starts crying, “Oh my god! Oh my god!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hadrian runs to clap Hella on the back, and when she turns her face is elated and then falls, because Adelaide isn’t here anymore. Her hand flies to the sheath on her belt, remembering all too late that it’s empty. Hella reaches a hand to her heart and takes a shaky breath, saying something to Hadrian. Both of them nodding, reassuring, looking like they’ve run miles and miles. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They dock the ship. There’s a storm here, too. And the four of them take staggering steps toward the university.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Fero feels the magic of old Hieron fill him utterly, washing away the cold of the rain and filling him with cinnamon, fennel, cloves, cardamom, coriander seeds, and star anise. He smells it. He tastes it, a delicious broth. And before he can really think, he’s a panther. He’s twenty-three brown panthers speeding too-close to the ground, flitting away and through the marshland.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And then he smells something else, and one of him seeks it out- hot blueberries. A fresh crust. Butter! Rich, salted butter. One pather becomes five, and the five become one again, and eventually all the birds form one Fero, crashing bodily into the door of a small cottage in the woods. His stomach is wracked, as if all those meals in the sword never counted.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey!” He calls, knocking on the door, “Hey! How far is it to the university, my friends and I need he-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the door opens, and the wind is knocked out of him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fero?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Disbelieving, “No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh my god? Fero?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nooooo-” Fero backs away from the door, looking back to the distant river. He really had flown quite far ahead.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lem falls to his knees, crushing Fero into an embrace in the process. “Fero, I can’t believe- I thought after so many days passed after the sword was fixed. I thought I- we failed. But. Fero! Oh my god!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Uh. Lem. Hey.” He chokes out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Honey?” calls a voice from inside, “Sweetie, close the door, you’re letting the storm inside. Oh-” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Emmanuel looks at Fero, meeting yellow eyes gleaming out from where his body is crushed against Lem’s shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>All Fero can see is the golden band on his finger.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. A Missing Metaphor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Lem time!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“What do YOU want?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The shuttering note of a mirror turned to shards. Birds squawking in the distance. A soggy page, divine verse turned appropriately to dust by divine flame.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lem hears none of it. All he hears is the one-two-three of his knees hitting the floor, his butt hitting his feet, his hands hitting the ground. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His glasses fall off, forgotten. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So much.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I have done so much!</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But he can’t, he can’t put the words together with their meaning. He can’t put Ephrim’s motions together with his words, can’t understand the shock in his voice or the shape of the names being said around him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Barely registers the tongue lapping at his down-turned face, until the bark shakes him back.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Kodiak?” he rasps. And he does not remember how that time floods into this one, the current of the stream too powerful.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>People chant in the streets, but it is clear that they don't know what to protest. Some shout insults to Samothes himself, “Where is he now, if he is so divine?”. Others call out the names of Kall Fer and Zhan Kurr, all the leaders of the Archives. If the pattern is broken, as it seems to be, then they should’ve been told. Others still blame Rosemerrow or Velas, or blame the mages whose University lays dormant and empty, about two weeks' travel south of here. Wherever you are in the Archives, you see and hear fear. To the west, Corsica Neue brings her forces to bear, and begins to march them westward. She doesn't know what she'll find, but she knows she will be needed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ephrim has stayed close, after Uklan Tel has all but finished his story, “Just a few details at the end.” he had said, before setting off to make tea. Ephrim busies himself by taking council with Corsica, paramilitary nothings passed between them while Throndir had hiked outside. He’s quite a ways away, now, throwing a stick for Kodiak and looking up at the sky.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lem can’t keep his eyes off the Heat and the Dark. The star structures that have consumed the southwest of Rosemarrow spread to the northwest, containing it. White strung around the shimmering black-opal, a beautiful and deadly amulet. There is a cloud of dust in the distance- the Grand Tour- and above it there is a thunderstorm. He can see the lightning following it. His eyes dig into the spaces where the Long-Sand had been, and cannot turn them to the space where-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He picks his glasses up off the floor. They are bent, and he tries to twist them back into shape.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I need a bet for a pattern,” Uklan Tel tells Lem, eyeing his glasses, “What to bet you’ll break them?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fuck off.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” He sighs, and looks out the window at that horrible blue nothing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lem twists the nosepiece of the glasses again, too gentle to make the metal hold a new shape. “What makes something like this happen? Was this part of your pattern, too?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, that was Fero.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fero did this?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Uklan Tel flips his glasses- old, pre-Erasure and made for reading- and replaces them with a studier pair, made for looking at people. Through them, his eyes look large and watery. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Not on purpose, I’d assume. Something goes horribly wrong. It's as simple as that. I'm not an expert, sometimes when… you've heard of when a divine gift is taken away, or somehow corrupted, or is influenced by something else, or…- there are lots of ways that things can go bad, specially things like this. For us, as you know, a pail of water can have one too many drops of salt, and the entire pattern is ruined. And sometimes that means that nothing happens, the pattern is void. But other times it means that we built a pattern we did not intend, and have to live with the consequences.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And now we’re living with yours.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ah,” Uklan takes a sip of his tea, “Yes. I suppose. Mine, yours. All of ours.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hm.” Lem squints through his near-sightedness trying to make shape of the chaotic abstraction out the window. He imagines it would look much the same with an eagle’s vision, and then banishes the thought of eagles. Of birds in general.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It was supposed to be you, you know. Through the mirror.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lem exhales, a not-laugh.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“In actuality, it was originally supposed to be Zhan Kurr. Zhan Kurr works for Kall Fer. She is not- if they had their way, Zhan would’ve gone. And I don't want to think about what Zhan would’ve caused. What pattern Zhan would’ve put into being. I wanted to send you, because…” He sighs, “Without our guidance, the guidance of the Archives, I trust that you would do the right thing when it is time. You-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lem barks out a laugh. “The right thing?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yes, the right thing. And now Fero is on his way to Samothes, and I-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Is there such thing?” Lem asks, unhearing, “Such a thing as the right thing? One too-many birds and your pattern takes the wrong person. Or was it the smiling library that was mistaken, did it- did it frown, in the end?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Lem-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“On his way to Samothes? Isn’t he dead.” Ephrim asks as he returns, Throndir following behind him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There is a great deal of talk, about insides and outsides. Basic arithmetic Lem had learned before his tusks grew in. Algebra about solving for the X of Samothes being alive, about the sword that Hella carries. The threads and needles of the Grand Tour, the cause without culture of the stars. But when Uklan does the mental math of putting the sand back into the world, and he mentions something about bees, Lem twists his glasses a final time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They snap.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>By the time Throndir mentions killing Arrell, Lem has already made it there. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hand-spun blankets, a clean kitchen, three brass mugs hung on the wall under cabinets. Two chairs- one a conglomeration of woods, a perpetual work-in-progress. The other he cannot bare to look at. He finds the bed, too-small as it has always been for his orcish frame, and he sleeps til morning.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I woke up one morning with a tail! A TAIL, Lem, can you believe it? And I was- I was freaking out, right. What the fuck! Aah! A fucking tail! And then it was gone!” Fero laughs and kicks his legs from where he sits on his kitchen counter, his face is young… but not from age. The days have turned and the moons have passed plenty of times since this memory, but it was not that long ago, really.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Lem’s clothes were cleaner, his hair was shorter. His glasses unbroken. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>
      <br/>
    </span>
  </em>
  <em></em>
  <span>Fero’s smile had a warmth to it, no edges yet. Twin creases between his eyebrows only starting to show. The crows by his eyes, though, had always been there. The thing that had aged him, really, was the utter weight of it all. He was free of it now, in this memory, and light like the birds he was filled with.<br/></span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Lem shifts uncomfortably in the chair Fero had built for him, once his company was frequent enough that it would be rude to keep making him sit on the floor. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I am too big for this chair.” He had said that day.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yeah,” Fero had replied, eyes feline in the early evening, “I know.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>@ferohours on twitter</p></blockquote></div></div>
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